Child-porn trading alleged in Second Life

If anybody needed confirmation that the online virtual world Second Life is not for kids, they got it this week. Law enforcement in Halle, Germany, is looking for Second Life players “who are reportedly buying sex with other players posing as children, as well as offering child pornography for sale,” The Guardian reports. A German investigative reporter who’s a member of Second Life told The Guardian “he had been ‘shocked to see’ the virtual child pornography meetings to which he was invited for 500 Linden dollars - around £1.50 [$2.99]. He said the same group of people subsequently put him in touch with traders in real child pornography.” Second Life’s parent, Linden Lab, in San Francisco, is working with police to find the offending players. Virtual child pornography is not a crime in the US, but in Germany it’s a crime “punishable by up to five years in prison,” The Guardian adds. Here’s the BBC’s coverage. According to just-released comScore research, 16% of Second Life users are German, making Germany “the largest country of origin in the ‘game’" of some 16 million players (followed by the US), The Register reports.